Here I talk about life and writing and my books, including The Tales from Atlantis book one Digging Up the Past and book two Reaching for Beyond. I give hints about what's to come and excerpts from current works.

Saturday, July 23, 2016

I know y’all think I’ve been slacking again, and I have, but
book one has now been reissued, and is back on Amazon and Createspace, and I’m
looking for other places to put it as well. The new cover is below.

However, in the meantime, I’m taking a much needed break and visiting
friends in California. I love the pace of life out here, at least in their
circle, and I love the fact that even in late June, you can sit outside a good
bit of the time. As a native Texan, this is something foreign to me. Late June
in Texas is hot, humid, and generally in the middle of an air quality alert, if
you are anywhere in the vicinity of a city.

I can breathe, and I can sit outside, what a concept. The
best part about traveling, however, is that with any luck, you get to relax,
and I have been doing nothing but relaxing. We have been to the movie, to a
theater with electric recliners and tray tables with drink holders, to a pasta
buffet at one of the local wineries, and tastings at several others. A nearby
brewery has BBQ on Friday nights, and today we drove up to Big Trees state park
to picnic.

Photography opportunities are abundant, and the shot of an
eagle in the top of a tree today was my most exciting so far.I also got some lovely shots of Pardee
Lake.Those will all be up on www.NaturalImagesbySandi.com shortly.

Alas, however, as the saying goes, all good things must come
to an end, and after not having to take a single allergy tablet for a week, my
allergies awakened immediately on my return, and went immediately to
bronchitis.This is fairly common for me,
but it does tend to slow me down.I have
finally recovered, and feel human again, so I’m back to my blog.

I’ll be putting up more teasers from Reaching for Beyond this summer and fall as I finish getting it
ready to go, so please let me know what you think.

Reaching for Beyond excerpt:

So much
blood.All I could see when I first walked
into the room was blood. I was glad I
had the paper booties on, but there was no way they could stand up to that much
blood. Whether I would ever get all the blood out of my shoes would be a
crapshoot, but I wasn’t going to bet on it.My feet squished when I walked into the room.

I couldn’t even see
the body at first. Even with my shields as tight as I could get them, emotions
screamed through the room, and through me.Rage. Pain. Terror. My hands shook, and I hid them in my pocket. I tried
to ground, and when my mind finally began to process the scene, my stomach
revolted. I swallowed rapidly to keep from bolting for the door.My anger increased.

I thought I’d seen
some bad scenes, but I was completely unprepared for what I was seeing and
feeling. It was beyond anything I could have imagined, and I have a very dark,
twisty imagination. I’ve seen some things I would have preferred not to see in
this job, but this was in a whole new category.

Even as I pushed
past the emotions permeating the room, I could still smell the blood and death,
the Lilin and Were. The blood and the darkness were still there. Blood had
soaked in to every visible surface in the bedroom, stood in pools on the
carpet, and dark energy continued to spread through the place, reaching for me,
trying to bathe me in its sliminess. More puddles held the legs of the
furniture where the floor and furniture had absorbed all they could. I could
barely process the scene. Some things your mind just refuses to accept. This
was one of those things.

What was left of
the body was lying on the bed in another pool of blood, and that increased my
anger. It was hard to tell, but I thought it had been a young woman. She didn’t
look much more than twenty, but it was hard to tell with her face distorted by
her screams. Her head had fallen back when her throat was torn out, and even
though the killer had eventually severed it from the body, the head, still
seemed to be leaning back, screaming. Somehow, the killer affixed the head to
the headboard.Her torso was lying in
the center of the bed.I couldn’t really
tell what color the spread had been.It
was all dark red now.Her stomach was ripped
open, intestines, and internal organs spilling from it like so much spaghetti.

Sunday, June 5, 2016

Well, here I am slacking again, but I wanted to make sure I
knew what would come next for my books.Booktrope, my publisher went out of business as of May 31, 2016;
however, I re-released Digging Up the Past on June 1, 2016 independently.This is a new experience for me, and I like
to consider all new experiences as adventures.Whether it is traveling alone to a new place, learning a new skill, or just
learning a new way to do something I’ve done before, I think the best way to
approach it is as something to look forward to.

Change is not easy, and very few people like even the idea
of getting outside their comfort zone, but firmly believe the only way we can
continue to grow is to leave the comfort zone and try something new.As a result, I have decided to be an indie
author, at least for this book, and probably the next one, so I’m looking
forward to this new adventure, and I hope you will all join me on the
adventure.

Digging Up the Past
has a new cover.My friend Doug
Myerscough did the front cover, and I did the back one.While I love the cover that I had when it was
published with Booktrope, I want to save that cover for a later book, and use
the new one to celebrate the new publication.

Isn’t it awesome!

The
ancient artifacts really bring out the spirit of the book since the mystery
surrounds an artifact missing from an archaeological dig.When magic returned to the world, with the
uprooting of the stones of the Bimini Road, those artifacts that used to be
just curiosities, once again became instruments of power, and a spade that
grants immortality and the ability to raise the dead is just too great a prize
for someone.

Excerpt:

Immortality? Now that’s
tempting. Throw in an army of the dead, and hey, any evil overlord would kill
for that package.

When the Homeland
Security Service’s Department of Unusual Events, or DUE, assigned my partner,
Jason, and me to this case, the file said the spade we were looking for was
valued at eighteen million dollars and belonged to the Peruvian government.
Stolen during shipment from Peru to the local university, the spade, along with
a number of the other artifacts uncovered on a dig site in Peru, was scheduled
for study here. According to our file, the HSS believed it had been stolen for
financial gain or, perhaps, to cause an international incident. Not our usual
type of case, but not unheard of either.

What the file didn’t
mention was that this wasn’t just any gold spade. This was the Spade of
Apocatequil. Peruvian legend has it that where ever Apocatequil stuck this spade
in the ground, people sprang up. Now, the spade is believed to grant the holder
immortality and the power to raise the dead. Minor omission.

My cover
on this assignment was that of a college student. I also worked as a dog walker
for the Bradens, who were our primary suspects, so every afternoon, Angel, the
Bradens’ German shepherd, and I made the two-block walk to the dog park near
the Bradens’ house.

When I
pulled in at the house, I could tell no one was home. The Bradens would be at
the local dig site until at least dark, getting set for the summer dig, and it
wasn’t unusual for Keesha, the Bradens’ daughter, and Mena, the operative from
Cerberus Security who’s been acting as her nanny, to be out in the early
afternoon. I clipped the leash on Angel and we headed for the park.

Oh, as
for why they should be our primary suspects, that’s the easy part. John Braden
was the American archaeologist on the Peruvian dig. His wife, Sonya, was the
lead anthropologist on that same dig, and that put them at the top of the list
of suspects. That placement was further supported by the fact that someone else
believed they had the spade. Our file also indicated that things had been
stolen from other dig sites when they were in charge. The hard part was that
there was no evidence, solid or otherwise, that they took the spade, or that
they were involved in any of the other thefts.

I’d
gotten to know the Bradens and Mena fairly well, and as an empath, I could tell
you that the Bradens were definitely anxious, scared even. The catch is that
even with my empathic skill, it’s hard to tell one anxiety from another, and
they had a legitimate reason to be anxious. Someone was threatening to kidnap
their daughter.

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Hello
fellow readers, Wesley Britton stopping by to talk about my newly
published novel, The Blood of Balnakin—The Beta-Earth Chronicles: Book
Two. For Sandi’s blog, I thought I’d talk about a few things I had to
consider while writing a sequel.

First,
I have to thank two people for helping out. In the debut story, The
Blind Alien, I introduced a number of characters in a polygamous family
along with issues that I’d have to introduce all over again in book two
for readers who might not have read the first book or probably have
forgotten what had happened to whom and why and where and when. It was
editor David Menefee who strongly encouraged me to deepen my
descriptions of the established cast of characters in the sequel’s
introduction, especially just what everyone looked like. In the first
chapter of Blood of Balnakin, I also went to great pains to touch on the
significant events in The Blind Alien, especially the impact many of
these would have in the sequel. Thus, I tried to make the sequel
understandable for readers completely new to the saga.

In
particular, in The Blind Alien, the Renbourn family was blamed by an
entire country for the devastating explosion in the city of Bergarten
which resulted in the deaths of thousands. Because of this, Tribe
Renbourn had to flee across the ocean to try to set roots in a new
country. But Lorei Cawl Renbourn, a blind prophetess of the goddess
Olos, had seen three visions of inevitable events that would ultimately
reconcile the family with the country of Balnakin. While Lorei is
unhappy about what these three things will mean, The Blood of Balnakin
leads to the fulfillment of these visions. Thus, books one and two of
the Beta-Earth Chronicles can be seen as two chapters of the same epic.

I
must also thank my wife, Betty Britton. After reading an early draft
of book two, she asked, “Don’t these wives ever argue with each other?
Don’t they ever play tricks on each other? Don’t the children ever get
underfoot?” I can’t emphasize enough the importance of these questions.

For
example, I’d spent considerable time dealing with the many pressures
the outside world was putting on the family, but I needed to do more
with conflicts within the tribe itself. That led to a very important
sub-plot where various wives have very different responses to what will
take place in the climax. In fact, that conflict becomes one of the most
important threads of the tapestry.

I
confess, the question about tricks led to one of my favorite chapters
in the book. You’ll read a rather elaborate description of trickery
that sets up one of the funniest seduction scenes I could imagine. It’s
something of a major surprise for the character you can meet in the
attachment to this post.

I
admit, I don’t really think I met my wife’s desires describing
underfoot children. As you’ll discover, there are so many major
characters in Blood of Balnakin, trying to invest many more paragraphs
to the next generation could have really muddied up things. Still, the
children of Malcolm Renbourn and his wives take on stronger roles than
they had in The Blind Alien and they will come closer to center stage in
books three and four.

So,
just a few observations about my writing process. I can add The Blood
of Balnakin is packed with surprises in character development, provides
many strange new settings, and unfolds in an unique style of
story-telling. Find out more at my website:

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

Whew! I feel kind of like Ash over there right now. I’m happy to say I have finally realized why Riley’s been
resisting as I’ve progressed through Reaching for Beyond. What I’m not happy to say is it will push
back the release for a bit while I do rewrites; however, it will be a much
better book for the delay. The good news
is that the work is progressing more rapidly than it has in a while, so it will
be coming up soon.

See the problem is that Riley is a loner, and I’ve been trying
to force her to be with people most of the time, and it’s apparently been
driving her a little batty. I’m looking forward to seeing her individual
approach to more of the events in the book.
The rest of the crew is still around, and are big parts of her life, but
as you know, and as she reminded me, Riley is well able to take care of herself
without being with someone all the time.

Jason and Cam

She and Jason work together, but they work best when they
each pursue their different approaches to each individual case, and then come
together to compare notes and bounce ideas off each other, so I’m going to let
them take their preferred approach, and see if it doesn’t flow better.

The relationship between Riley and Cam will change and
develop in this book, but I have no idea which direction they will take. They haven’t let me know yet what they want
to do, but I’m sure they will.

Other Characters

Some of the other characters from Digging Up the Past will
be in Reaching for Beyond as well, and there will be some new people to meet,
but where they will fit into Riley’s life remains to be seen. She tends to try
to keep people at arm’s length because people around her often die.

I don’t know why I suddenly failed to listen to her about
how she works best, but there it is.
It’s a mistake I will not to make again, but since I tend to try to take
control of situations, I can’t make any promises, so I’m sure Riley and I will
but heads again before the series is over.
I’m sure the payoff for this conflict will be more interesting books for
you, and it will certainly be a wild ride for me, and probably for both of us. Enjoy!

My stomach
churned. The blood and death were bad enough, but the smell of werewolf, and
Lilin combined with the dark energy that I couldn’t identify emanating from the
house concerned me more than the smell alone. The dark energy seemed to seep
through my shields, and the effect it was having on me scared the crap out of
me. I could feel anger rising.

I wished that Sam,
the DUE wizard, or my partner, Jason, who wasn’t in town yet, were here, for
moral support if nothing else, but maybe by the time I talked to them, I could
figure out how to explain it, and even more importantly, maybe I could figure
out why it was making me angry. It wasn’t emotional energy. It was just dark.
Even so, with my training and shields, it shouldn’t have affected me at all,
much less so strongly. The only benefit I could see right now from either my
training or my shields was that I realized what it was that was making me angry. Knowing that helped me know how to push it
back and not take it out on the people around me. Unfortunately, I couldn’t
tell exactly why it was making me
angry, and it didn’t seem to be connected to the Lilin or Werewolf energy. It might not have helped if it was connected
to one of them, but at least I’d have a place to start.

“Are you alright?” One of the uniforms asked
me. He was young, and probably had never been to a scene like this before. He also
looked like he thought I was going to contaminate the crime scene, but I was
willing to bet he still hadn’t been inside, and it would probably be best if he
didn’t go.

“No. Let’s get
this done.” It came out sharper than I intended it, but the anger kept rising,
pushing me to lash out. Knowing what was causing it helped some, but the urge
to punch someone was increasing. When an empath lashes out, our emotions spill
out over everyone. If I wasn’t careful, I could start a brawl at the crime
scene. Not particularly helpful when trying to solve a crime and a good way not
to be invited back.